Sports

CENTURION - After taking a battering for two days, India finally put up some resistance with a solid start to their second innings on the third day of the first Test against South Africa at SuperSport Park on Saturday.
Faced with a massive first innings deficit of 484 runs, India reached 190 for two at the close. Gautam Gambhir and Virender Sehwag put on 137 for the first wicket before Sehwag was caught at wide long-off for 63 off the bowling of left-arm spinner Paul Harris.

LAHORE - Pakistan cricket team, sans captain Shahid Afridi and four other senior players including Younus Khan, Umar Gul, Shoaib Akhtar and Abdul Razzaq, has left for Auckland on a 40-day tour of New Zealand.
Afridi and the other four players who did not board the flight to New Zealand have been permitted by PCB to go to Malaysia for a World Cup related commercial shoot, and they will join the team in Hong Kong on way to Auckland.
Team manager Intikhab Alam said he was

PERTH - Mike Hussey produced a sparkling century before Australia's pace bowlers destroyed England's top order to push the hosts to the brink of a series-levelling victory on day three of third Ashes test in Perth.
The 35-year-old Hussey's composed 116, as his batting partners fell like dominoes, propelled Australia's second innings to 309 and set England a mammoth 391-run chase with two days to play.
England began their chase disastrously by losing five wickets after tea to

LAHORE - Nepal pushed Pakistan girls aside in the last league match of the SAFF Women's Championship to qualify for the semi-final. Nepal qualified along with Pakistan, Bangladesh and India.
Pakistan will face India in the semi-final on December 20 while Bangladesh will take on Nepal on December 21. The final is scheduled for December 23. In Nepal's 12-0 victory over Pakistan, front runner Anu Lama landed the opener in the 15th minute.
Mira Maharjan doubled the lead in the

DUBAI - Ryan Lochte continues his world record hunt at the short course world championships here later Saturday after easing to victory in the 100m individual medley heats.
Lochte, who has claimed three golds and two world records so far this week, had pushed the pace until the final few metres, when he literally drifted into the wall to cruise to a time of 52.07.
Brazil's Henrique Rodrigues qualified second with a 52.23 mark and George Bovell from Trinidad qualified in

VAL GARDENA - Swiss skier Silvan Zurbriggen won the men's downhill race here on Saturday for his second ever World Cup victory and went top of the overall standings.
The 29-year-old Olympic combined and world slalom medallist - a distant cousin of Swiss great Pirmin Zurbriggen - beat home Austrian Romed Baumann by six hundreths of a second while Swiss veteran Didier Cuche was third, 10 hundreths of a second adrift.
Friday's Super-g victor Austria's Michael Walchhofer - a

BEIJING - Chinese basketball fans and pundits speculated Saturday about the possible end of an era following NBA superstar Yao Ming's latest injury setback, urging the national sports hero to consider retirement.
The 7ft 6in Houston Rockets centre, who sat out all of last season after reconstructive surgery on a broken left foot, was working to come back from a left ankle injury suffered last month. This week, however, an MRI exam revealed a stress fracture in Yao's ankle, and

PARIS - Denmark's Caroline Wozniacki ended the year the women's world number one, but the consensus is that Serena Williams is the best player on earth.
The problem as ever with the American, who will turn 30 next year, is her level of commitment to the sport as she continues to dabble in everything from acting to fashion design to her charity work in Africa.
Williams opened the year with a blast when she won the Australian Open for the fifth time by defeating comeback queen

HUA HIN - Unheralded Piya Swangarunporn of Thailand birdied his closing two holes for a shock one-stroke lead at the 600,000-dollar Black Mountain Masters on Saturday.
But hot on his heels are proven winners Tetsuji Hiratsuka of Japan, who enjoyed a career first with three eagles in a spectacular round of 67, and Thailand's Thongchai Jaidee. The 27-year-old Piya, chasing a maiden Asian Tour victory, battled to a four-under-par 68 in the third round at the Black Mountain Golf Club

LAHORE - The confrontation between suspended Pakistan Test captain Salman Butt and the ICC took a serious turn after it was disclosed that the Butt had expressed his distrust in the ICC chief executive and the head of ICC Code of Conduct commission which will hear his appeal next month.
The Code of Conduct commission returned the reply filed by Butt's legal team and gave him 24 hours to submit a fresh reply or forgo his right of defence. It was revealed that in his reply, the

LAHORE - Pakistan's ousted wicket-keeper, Kamran Akmal, has rejected the impression that PCB has asked him to present his asset details.
"I was never asked about submitting my asset details with the PCB," he claimed after meeting PCB chairman Ijaz Butt. Kamran said he was confident that ICC would give him the permission to represent Pakistan in the World Cup.
The ICC has extended the deadline to January 5, 2011 for PCB to announce the preliminary 30-man squad for the

LAHORE - A PCB official has confirmed that Major Khawaja Najam had tendered his resignation as security manager of the Pakistan team, which was accepted by the chairman of the board with immediate effect.
Najam was brought in as security manager of the team earlier this year and accompanied the team on all tours since the T20 World Cup in the West Indies. "Due to the recent spate of controversies about involvement of players in spot-fixing and the Zulqarnain Haider episode, the

LAHORE - The International Hockey Federation has included Pakistan in next year's Champion's Trophy. Pakistan have not featured in the Champion's Trophy for the last three years.
Hosts India got an automatic entry in the 2011 men's Champion's Trophy while Pakistan and Korea were the two teams included after FIH expanded the number of participants from six to eight.
President Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) Qasim Zia and Secretary Asif Bajwa said they were grateful to FIH

LAHORE - Evacuee Property Board Chairman Asif Hashami has said that efforts are being made for the encouragement of the country's national champions.
He expressed this during a meeting with a delegation of blind cricketers led by Captain Abdur Razzak and members Mohammad Shahzad, Nabeel Shaukat and Fida Shahzad.
He said that a meeting of the blind cricket team is being arranged with Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani so that their problems are resolved at the earliest.

LAHORE - SPM Stags won their match in the 4th SPM League Cricket Tournament in the Professional Group here on Saturday. SPM Stags beat Muslim Gymkhana by 118 runs.
SPM Stags scored 248 for five wickets in 35 overs. Nadeem Javed (53 not out), Usman Liaqat (50), Mujahid Ali (44), Ayaz Tasawar (42) and Salman Ali (39) all pitched in to reach the total. Tehseen Mirza took two wickets for Muslim Gymkhana.
Muslim Gymkhana could score only 130 runs and lost all their wickets.

PERTH - Australian paceman Peter Siddle said on Saturday that England had played batsman Michael Hussey back into form during the Ashes series by bowling too short to him.
The left-handed Hussey all but put the third Test out of reach of the tourists with a crisp 116, his second century of the series, as Australia closed in on an Ashes-levelling win at the WACA Ground in Perth. On the verge of being axed before the first Test, Hussey is now the top scorer in the series with 517

ROME - Napoli coach Walter Mazzarri is aiming to establish his side amongst Serie A's big boys and to do so he wants his players to prove they're capable of lasting the course at the top.
In midweek Napoli became the only Italian team to make it out of the Europa League group stages as they took second place behind Group K rivals Liverpool. And now Mazzarri expects his players to demonstrate they can handle two games in a week and also despatch so-called smaller teams on a